Category Archives: Anti Hs2 mob

As sure as night follows day, the last daft Stop Hs2 Parliamentary petition ran out of time and signatures yesterday. Despite frantic efforts by the remaining anti Hs2 groups in the last couple of days they never managed to scrape together more than a few hundred of the 70,000 plus signatures they fell short by after 6 months of trying. Here’s the final (humiliating) total.

29,838 from a population of over 65 million is (quite frankly) pathetic. It’s less than the population of a small town like Bedworth in Warwickshire (30,001). Or, look at it another way. Hs2 will pass through 63 constituencies containing 6,567.433 people. Here’s a breakdown of those figures by the phases of Hs2. They make interesting reading.

Lets take the headline figure first. Of the 6.5m living on the Hs2 route, just a quarter of 1 percent signed the StopHs2 petition. That’s despite the anti Hs2 campaign having been running and organising for 8 years! 55.29% of all the petition signatures came from just 9.69% of constituencies! (63 out of 650).

This is what makes me laugh about these petitions. Tactically, they’ve never made the slightest bit of sense! They’ve never stood a chance of getting 100,000 signatures and even if they did they’re a waste of time because what’s on offer? – the chance for Parliament to do what it’s already going to do – debate Hs2. But, as Parliament has to vote on the various Hs2 Hybrid Bills anyway that’s a given! Add in the fact that Hs2 enjoys cross party support and there’s not a cat in hells chance of it being voted down by MPs. So you can see why all these petitions do is hand people like me a rich seam of data to drill down through and expose the weakness of the anti Hs2 campaign! For example. Just looking at the constituency map of where most signatures come from shows that (surprise surprise) it’s easy to work out where Hs2 will run. So much for the claims that StopHs2 isn’t a Nimby based campaign!

Now let’s look at the numbers for each constituency by phases, starting with Phase 1.

Initially I just kept a running total and percentage. At the end of November 2017 I decided to add monthly totals and last date of signings in order to examine trends. Here’s some headline figures.

The constituency with the most signatures is Chesham and Amersham with 1,723 (1.83% of constituents). The lowest is Birmingham Ladywood with 12 (0.01%). This reflects a trend across all 3 phases. The constituencies with the most signatures are rural and the lowest are urban. Look at the constituencies in Birmingham. The numbers are poor right across the board. They’re no better in London. Only Ruislip, Northwood & Pinner has over 1%. Camden has a measly 555 (0.3%) despite all the supposed opposition to Hs2 in the borough

These figures put to the sword the anti Hs2 campaign’s claims that the majority of the UK opposes Hs2 and that ‘millions’ are blighted. What they show is areas where StopHs2 action groups are active – and where they’re not.

Of course, other people were calling for people to sign the petition, notably the Green Party. Estimates for their membership numbers vary but they’re certainly under 50,000, which suggests they had mixed success. The Greens have struggled to rally opposition to Hs2. I’d suggest the reason for this is twofold. One is their schizophrenic position on High Speed Rail, supporting it ‘in principle’ but opposing it in practice, plus the fact Hs2’s a railway and people rather like railways – it’s not fracking.

The other party (if you can still call them that) to oppose Hs2 was UKIP. Their membership figures can’t be trusted as most of the ones they claim are actually pushing up daisies, but they may still have managed to get a few hundred people to sign.

Now let’s look at the Phase 2 and 2a route from North of Birmingham to Manchester.

Compared to 0.36% of folk living on Phase 1, the number’s dropped by a third to just 0.12% on the Manchester leg. This reflects several things. One’s the weakness of organised opposition here. Stophs2 was always a Southern based campaign and its heartland was the Chilterns. There’s only a handful of ‘action’ groups up North and it’s easy to spot where they’re based on the Manchester leg.

The constituency with the most signatures is Stone with 368 (0.43%) and the lowest is Denton & Reddish in Manchester with 12 (0.01%). Yet again, the figures expose the fact this is a rural campaign, not an urban one. In fact, there’s not a single StopHs2 ‘action’ group in any town or city Hs2 will serve. You could add every single signature in Greater Manchester and it would still be less than the total for Stone, despite the disparity in population size! In fact, look at how few in Gtr Manchester signed each month. The figures are so small that one family signing could double the monthly numbers!

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, the Phase 2a Hybrid Bill petition’s currently making its way though Parliament. This affects the first five constituencies on the list – 4 of which are in the top 5 signatures! I’d suggest that this means the Phase 2 bill for the leg to Manchester has very little to worry about in the way of organised opposition. The support for Hs2 far outweighs anything else. Now let’s go and look at Phase 2 to Leeds.

I’ve fleshed this one out with a bit more data. It includes population sizes, the names of the MP’s and which way they voted on the Hs2 Phase 2a Bill.

The constituency with the most signatures is Rother Valley with 1650 (1.74%) and the lowest is (yes, you’ve guessed it) an urban constituency – Nottingham North with 17 (0.02%). The picture on this leg is different to the others as the situation’s more mixed. The majority of the opposition to Hs2 has been driven by the 2016 route change – hence the figure for Rother Valley. Also of interest is that despite all the noise made by a vociferous but tiny ‘action’ group in Erewash, they could only muster 200 signatures (0.21%) and their MP, Maggie Throup is no pushover and voted FOR Hs2 phase 2a. The figures also show that the claims that Yorkshire is totally opposed to Hs2 (see one Johnathan Pile here) are very wide of the mark as of the 2,185.931 souls here, just 4793(0.21%) have signed the petition – and 34.4% of them are from one constituency!

These figures lead me to conclude that Yorkshire’s a bit “all mouth and no trousers”. There’s a handful of tiny groups that make a lot of noise, writing cheques they can’t cash, but they’ve little support in the wider community or the political arena. Nor can they agree on a concerted course of action.

This leads me on to another observation. nationally, the anti Hs2 campaign’s collapsed. In 2010 there were 4 allegedly ‘national’ anti Hs2 groups. AGAHST (Action Groups Against Hs2, based in the Chilterns). 51m, a collection of councils (mostly Chiltern and phase 1 based). Hs2aa (High Speed 2 Action Alliance, based in Amersham) and StopHs2 (based in Warwickshire).

Now only StopHs2 survives – if in name only. Its two leading lights live in Bournemouth and Kenilworth, miles away from each other and where the action is nowadays! They’ve given up any pretence of leading a campaign and when they do appear it’s to moan about Hs2 on social media. They’ve no influence on proceedings on Phase 2 and I doubt they’ll survive long enough to even be around when the Phase 2 Hybrid Bill enters Parliament next year.

What’s left of the anti Hs2 campaign is a bunch of disparate local groups with no clear agenda to unite them and no national organisation worth its name to guide them. Some are still re-running the tactics that failed to Stop hs2 on phase 1, others have given up and are fighting for mitigation (such as extended tunnels) and/or compensation.

In summary, there is no Stop Hs2 campaign anymore. It’s collapsed. To stop Hs2 a campaign needs money, organisation and most crucially – political support. The remaining folk opposed to Hs2 have none of these and the way many of the MPs who opposed Phase 1 voted FOR phase 2a is the most obvious example.

No doubt a few die-hards and the bandwagon jumping egotists who infest such campaigns via social media will continue to pretend otherwise, but it matters not. Cross-party support for Hs2 remains unbroken, Phase 1 is under construction, the phase 2a bill is unstoppable and the phase 2 bill is inevitable.

I’m working in central London today and serendipity meant that nearby the Harvil Rd stophs2 protesters were ‘up before the beak’ at the Royal Courts of Justice, where Hs2 Ltd and the DfT had applied for an injunction against 8 named protesters (that’s all there is on a regular basis). Here’s the details, care of the protesters own Twitter account.

Rather foolishly considering they’ve so little support, the protesters called for a demonstration outside the hearing. They publicised it via Twitter and the Penny & Joe show (formerly known as Stophs2) joined in…

10.30-12.30? That suited me fine, so I decided to pop along and see how they were doing and what the media scrum would be like. Would the City of London police be out in force to keep order I wondered? I thought I’d give them plenty of time, let Joe Rukin get his inflatable elephant set up and the party get into full swing, so I didn’t pop along until 11.30. This is what I found. Nothing, no-one, nada, zip, not a sausage – nothing….

The Rolls building’s to the right of the picture. Considering that Hs2 passes through NINE London constituencies holding a total of 1,079.897 souls that’s an impressive bit of apathy! It also highlights the Harvil Rd protesters problem. Unlike when they flit between Hillingdon & Euston, when you’re up in court, you can’t be in two places at the same time!

As expected, yesterday’s vote on the 2nd reading of the Hs2 Hybrid bill for phase 2a from the West Midlands to Crewe was (to put it mildly) a walkover. The bill passed with a crushing result of 295 Ayes and just 12 Noes. 12! Remember that 41 MPs voted against phase 1 of Hs2, which shows how much the anti campaign’s collapsed. Many of the usual suspects (Chery Gillan and Michael Fabricant being the most prominent) voted no but some familiar names abstained, including Labour’s Kelvin Hopkins, Barry Sheerman, Dennis Skinner and Kier Starmer. This was despite Sheerman speaking during the debate and saying how much he opposed Hs2 – but not enough to vote against it, which makes him as much use as a chocolate fireguard! What’s interesting is how all the usual Labour antis abstained this time but Sir Kevin Barron, the MP for Rother Valley voted (for the first time) against Hs2. This suggests to me that the Labour Party hierarchy gave him a free pass as his is the only constituency on the phase 2 route to Leeds that has any real opposition to Hs2. When I crunched the numbers this morning 1382 constituents had signed the Stop Hs2 petition. That’s still only 1.46% of course, but the nearest to it is Bolsover with a measly 0.43%!

In another twist, the antis favourite Tory leadership candidate (who was supposed to oppose Hs2), Jacob Rees Mogg actually voted for it! Not only Mogg did a volte face. So did seven other MPs from the 41 who’d voted against Phase 1. They were;

Steve Baker (High Wycombe)

Bob Blackman (Harrow Est)

Peter Bone (Wellingborough)

Chris Chope (Christchurch)

Mark Pawsey (Rugby)

Chris Pincher (Tamworth)

John Redwood (Wokingham)

What happened politically was the Labour party abstained, knowing full well the Tory’s had the numbers to carry the bill through with a large majority without them – although 13 Labour MPs (many of whom have held transport briefs) did support the bill. There were some interesting patterns too, all of the 13 MPs on the remaining Phase 2 route to Manchester abstained, as did 14 of the 22 on the phase 2 route to Leeds, whilst 6 voted yes and only 2 no.

Of course Stophs2 tried some desperate spin, whinging that over half of MPs were absent or abstained, but this ‘look over there’ tactic couldn’t hide the fact many of those abstaining were their suporters!

Worse was to come when it became evident that some MPs targeted by ‘action’ groups in Yorkshire & Derbyshire had voted to build the line. Broxtowe’s Anna Soubry and Erqewash’s Maggie Throup being examples! Whilst articulating their constituents concerns it was obvious neither MP was afraid of the tiny but noisy anti Hs2 ‘action’ groups in their constituencies. Both MPs know more constituents will benefit from the opportunities Hs2 will bring rather than suffer.

This leaves the Stop Hs2 campaign as dead as a dodo. Nationally, it’s disintegrated. Hs2 Action Alliance gave up years ago and the ‘Joe & Penny’ show (aka StopHs2) is a joke with Rukin increasingly absent. Essentially, it’s Penny whinging about Hs2 via the internet from her home in Bournemouth!

It’s obvious the local action groups attempts to frighten MPs into supporting them have either failed or backfired, which really does beg the question – what’s the point anymore?

Phase 2a is now a done deal. Nothing short of a miracle can stop its progress to Royal Assent despite the fantasy beliefs of of a few antis who don’t understand the Parliamentary process on Hybrid bills. What’s crystal clear is that cross party support for Hs2 is as stong as ever. Unless this breaks down…Another sign of their failure is the fact only 188 petitions have been received on Phase 2a. Contrast that with the 1,925 which were received in a futile attempt to bog down Phase 1. I’ve blogged about the 188 received here.

The only lobbying of MPs is being done by the local ‘action’ groups but tactically they’re inept. In many cases ‘lobbying’ means trying to throw their non-existant weight around and blustering rather than admitting that they can’t stop Hs2 & focussing on discussing compensation and mitigation instead.

From some of the posturing and levels of denial I’ve seen on Twitter today it’s clear the penny hasn’t dropped with some antis yet. For some it never will. This presents the remaining ‘action’ groups with a problem. Either they ditch these people or the ship goes down with all hands. Will there now be an outbreak of common-sense on the phase 2 route to Leeds (the only one left with active groups)?

Whatever way, it’s obvious the national StopHs2 campaign exists in name only.

Five days ago the Parliamentary timetable was announced for the 2nd reading of the Hs2 Phase 2a Hybrid Bill from the W Midlands to Crewe. This is the most important Parliamentary event since 2014 when the Phase 1 Hybrid Bill passed its second reading with a stonking majority of 411. 2nd reading is Parliament’s seal of approval on Phase 2a. If the bill passes, then Parliament is stating its intention that the line to Crewe will be built. 3rd reading and Royal Assent will follow almost automatically.

This means that the 30th is a crucial day for those opposed to building Hs2, especially those living on the phase 2a route. 2nd reading’s a week today (next Tuesday), so what are supposed ‘national’ group Stop Hs2 doing about it? Completely ignoring it – that’s what! Anyone relying on Stop Hs2 for news wouldn’t have a clue it’s even happening as there’s been no mention on their website, Facebook page or Twitter feed! It’s as if it doesn’t exist – which speaks volumes about the collapse of the Stop Hs2 campaign. The day Parliament made the announcement the only ‘news’ on the Stop Hs2 website was about a Euston Vicar chained to a tree. Talk about a sideshow!

The fact Stop Hs2 have ignored the real story says everything. Essentially, they’ve given up. They’ve changed from actively trying to stop Hs2 to doing nothing but moan about Hs2. Mind you, they’re not even doing much of that. They’re very much a part-time organisation who disappear for days – as the gaps on the website and social media accounts demonstrate. There’s no active campaigning going on anymore – as completely ignoring phase 2a shows. In the ‘old days’ StopH2 would have been organising demonstrations, encouraging people to respond to the petitioning process, publishing info for them to use etc, now? There’s nothing. It’s hardly surprising. StopH2 is two people, Chair Penny Gaines who now lives down in the SouthWest and ‘Campaign Manager’ Jo Rukin. Whilst he looks for a proper job Rukin’s reduced to a retweeting service for any old rubbish on the #hs2 hashtag or making up outrageous porkies for his rare posts on their website. Gaines is just as bad.

It’s the same on the ground. Here’s the latest Stop Hs2 petition results for phase 2a.

Not a single area has managed even half of 1% of constituents signing. Not exactly constituencies up in arms, are they? I’ve had a look through social media to see what action there is from any remaining ‘action’ groups on the route. The answer? Bugger all.

Here’s ‘Lichfield against Hs2’ Facebook page. It’s been derelict since September 2017. A grand total of 172 followed it. Of course, Lichfield’s MP, Michael Fabricant is a high-profile StopHs2 supporter but he’s very much in a minority. He’s good at gesture politics and self-publicity but he’s essentially powerless when it comes to trying to stop Hs2.

The villages of Whitmore and Madeley have a joint Facebook page which has been updated. Are they going to protest about the bill, perhaps rally in London? No. They’re going to have a meeting about it AFTER the bill passes 2nd reading! They’re not campaigning to stop Hs2, they’re campaigning for a longer, deeper tunnel.

The Tamworth ‘action’ group have a website that’s been derelict since March 2012! I can’t find anything else more recent.

I can find no sign of an ‘action’ group in Stone, although the local Tory MP, Sir Bill Cash does oppose Hs2. There’s no sign of organised grassroots opposition.

Staffordshire as a county has no organised opposition on the ground either. That collapsed years ago due to in-fighting as it was dominated by eccentrics who were using it to further their personal aggrandisement or UKIP agendas rather than as a serious Stop Hs2 campaign (see Trevor Forrester!)

As for Crewe – forget it. The opposition to Hs2 in the town was always politically led by either UKIP or the Greens. Now UKIP is a disaster area and the Greens are in a parlous state in the polls. In contrast, the Local Enterprise Partnership and politicians are strongly in favour of Hs2.

If anyone knows of any other groups, Facebooks pages of websites that should be included here – please, let me know.

If this is a look at the health of the StopHs2 campaign, the only diagnosis is that it’s terminal. The ‘national’ group is completely irrelevant now, but then it was always a national group in name only. Like Hs2aa and AGAHST, it was really all about phase 1. When it was clear that couldn’t be stopped, the writing was on the wall.

UPDATE: 26th January.

Yesterday StopHs2 finally had to admit that the Phase 2a Hybrid Bill would get its second reading on Tuesday. Penny Gaines (Joe Rukin still having gone missing) posted this dollop of recycled nonsense on their website. It tacitly admits defeat. There’s no call to arms, no demonstrations organised, no suggestions on what people should do to oppose the bill – nothing – just a whinge with a few porkies thrown in. Gaines makes the usual allegations that Hs2 is ‘late’. Whilst it’s true the timetable for the initial stages has slipped, the opening dates haven’t – she also completely ignores the fact the opening date for phase 2a has been brought forward from 2033 to 2027. That’s 6 years early!

Gaines says she and Rukin will be ‘live tweeting’ on the day. In other words, She’ll be sat at home in Bournemouth & Rukin in Kenilworth and they’ll have a whinge about the bill passing on Twitter. That’s what their ‘campaign’ is reduced to. It’s powerless, toothless and pointless. It exists as a ‘campaign’ in name only. It’s as much a campaign as an old bloke in a pub moaning about the world.

I’m puzzled. The anti Hs2 mob have always sworn blind that they’re the majority. That (depending on which clickbait poll you care to read) the whole country is united in opposition to Hs2. It’s been the one single message that’s run through their campaign like the lettering in a stick of rock. Everybody opposes Hs2…

OK, so let’s bin the clickbait polls and the posturing, cut through the crap and look at reality. Let’s crunch some real numbers and look at events on the ground.

For a start, how many people live in the 63 constituencies that Hs2 passes through? According to the Government website Hs2 antis often use for their petitions, that’s 6,567,433 people. Yep, over 6.5 MILLION – hardly an insignificant number. So, first question. If that’s the case, why’ve less than 0.37% of them signed the latest Stophs2 petition? I’m typing this at 12:53 on a Saturday. Here’s the score on the door as I do. 24,814 – out of 6.5m

In fact, the position’s worse than that total suggests. 24814 is the total nationally, it includes the 3 received from the Orkneys & Shetland (where Hs2 is obviously a burning issue and dominating the inbox of the local MP). It also includes 2 signatures from Mid Ulster, another area which is clearly vexed about Hs2. So, what’s the real total for the 63 constituencies? I crunched the numbers yesterday. Here they are.

Having taken out all the signatures from constituencies away from the route we’re left with the fact that just 0.21% of people living on the route of Hs2 have signed the Stop H2 petition! 0.2%! So much for the strength of the support Stop Hs2 claim. But then this is what happens when you look beyond the hype to the real numbers.

It’s the same when you look at the campaign on the ground. They used to hold annual conventions, the last one was at The Staffordshire showground in June 2013. Their last national rally was in April 2014, the day Parliament passed the Phase 1 bill with a stonking majority of 411. Less than 100 demonstrators countrywide turned up.

Now the focus has switched to ‘direct action’ to prevent Hs2 being built. Apart from the fact this is a tacit admittance of their failure, it’s also proved to be a huge embarrassment due to the miserly turnout. Take Euston as an example. On the 12th January a local Vicar and another protester chained themselves to a tree in Euston Gardens. How many protesters were there? Less than the number of media who turned out to watch! (link).

Now this was central London and a borough that the protesters tell you is dead set against Hs2? So where are they all? One of the people interviewed, Keri Brennan is from Hillingdon, not Camden! Stophs2 should have had hundreds of people here, but they didn’t. Why? Because most people have given up. What you see in the TV interviews are the same few faces.

It was the same a few days later when the gardens were closed. How many demonstrators staged a sit-down protest? THREE.

This is Camden (pop 143,242) and this is the best they can do? One of them is from Hillingdon!

If this is the best they can do it really is laughable! If they can’t get people to turn up in central London then they really are in trouble. Meanwhile, what about that other protest in Harvil Rd in Hillingdon? It’s no better there. Harvil Rd has been organised by Hillingdon Green party. One of the stalwarts of the Harvil Rd protest is a woman called Sarah Brooks. Wait a minute, Sarah, that name sounds familiar? Yep, it’s the same Sarah who was at Euston in the pic above. There’s so few people involved that they have to be shared between protests!

Harvil Rd isn’t exactly a hotbed of protest either. They have a small camp opposite the site entrance and occasionally make a nuisance of themselves by climbing on heavy plant or blocking the site entrance. Here’s an example.

Not exactly the Twyford Down protests, is it?

Corralled behind those barriers are a grand total of FOUR protesters! Hs2 Ltd have announce that they’re seeking a High Court order to restrain the protesters. They’ve named SEVEN people in it – that’s all the regulars involved! Here’s another view produced by the protesters themselves that includes a plea for extra people to join them.

In the video on the left hand side is another familiar face. The ‘spokesman’ for Hillingdon Green party, Mark Kier, who produced this load of tosh back in December. I mean, come on folks! This isn’t exactly on the scale of the Twyford Down or the M11 link road protests is it? This is their problem. The anti Hs2 groups have always written cheques they can’t cash. They’ve always pretended that they have more public support then they had. Sadly, the national media has always swallowed their claims without questioning them. This blog doesn’t. It was the same when the Hs2 plus report was launched in Manchester in 2014. None of the handful of demonstrators outside was from Manchester (which doesn’t have a single StopHs2 group in the whole of the city), they were all from Cheshire!

If Greater Manchester says ‘No’ to Hs2, why a you lot all from Mid-Cheshire then, you lying toads?

Of course all this is a sideshow. Hs2 Phase 1 is under construction. On the 30th January the spotlight shifts and the Hybrid Bill for the next phase of HS2 – the section from Birmingham to Crewe will get its second reading in Parliament. It would take a miracle for the bill not to pass as Hs2 has always had cross-party support. A fact that makes these futile protests look even more pointless.

UPDATE: 9th February 2018.

As expected, the Phase 2 a Hybrid bill sailed through by 295 votes to 12. There wasn’t a single stophs2 protester outside Parliament that day. Meanwhile, the Harvil Rd protest has faded away and attracts little attention or support. It’s the same at Euston where the removal of trees in Euston Square gardens resulted in a protest from just a handful of people;

Over 143,000 people live in Camden but this is the best anti Hs2 protesters could do.

Meanwhile, StopHs2, the sole remaining ‘national’ campaign group hasn’t been heard from all month (apart from a couple of retweets on twitter). It’s website hasn’t been updated since January. Will the last one out please turn off the lights?

When major news stories break Twitter can be a very strange place. It can educate, amuse and frustrate all at the same time. It can also make you seriously wonder about the sanity of some of your fellow citizens – the one’s who never let the fact they know absolutely nothing about a subject and clearly have a tenuous grip on reality stop them sharing their ‘wisdom’.

The collapse of Carillion and the fact it had some contracts to build Hs2 is a classic example. If you believed some of the nonsense, Carillion was solely responsible for building the line which is now going to collapse as a result of them folding. Needless to say, those opposed to Hs2 have leapt on the story, grasping every straw they can find to claim that either this is the ‘end’ for Hs2, or that the Government should now cancel the scheme as a consequence. Here’s a superb example of the bat-shit crazy!

Meanwhile, Joe Rukin of StopHs2 returned from semi-retirement (he’s not written anything since 22 Nov) to pen this on their website;

“Today, crisis-hit Carillion has gone into liquidation, less than six months after it was awarded the contract to design and build all the tunnels on Phase 1 of HS2.”

Carillion were designing and building all of the Hs2 tunnels? Really?

No. It’s Rukin lying through his teeth again. In fact, Carillion weren’t involved in any bored tunnels. Here’s are the details of the 3 construction contracts (that were divided into 7 lots) which were let to different Joint Ventures (JVs). The information comes from the official Government website.

Carillion were part of the CEK Joint venture, along with Eiffage Genie Civil and Kier Infrastructure and Overseas. They won lots C2 and C3 – neither of which involve boring tunnels. All the tunnelling sections were won by other JVs. The other members of the CEK JV have stated that they have contingency plans in place to deal with the collapse of Carillion, so it’s very likely they’ll continue without them whilst looking for a replacement.

Of course, none of this will stop the ill-informed frothing as people sound off, but eventually the penny will start to drop with some as it becomes obvious that Hs2 is continuing. One very public sign of this is all the work at Euston. The gardens at the front of the station closed yesterday. This led to a futile protest by three demonstrators who were quickly removed from the site before the fencing went up.

The other protest site further up the line at Harvil Rd isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity either. The protesters tweeted out this picture the other day. Four people corralled behind fencing, outnumbered by the people protecting them is more Watership Down than Twyford Down!

So, has the public furore over Carillion and the anti Hs2 protesters attempts to grab media attention by chaining a Vicar to a Euston tree helped their cause? Not in the slightest. Their petition on the Government website continues to underwhelm. By close of play yesterday it had garnered a grand total of 24,136 signatures since September 2017. The only problem is that to be in with a chance it needed 66,200 plus! The maths are inescapable. On average it needs over 1150 signatures per day until March 21st. Yesterday it managed 188. Today it has 10. Its average is dropping daily and currently stands just over the 200 mark. It’s toast.

Meanwhile, away from the doomed Stop Hs2 protests, I’m sure that some awkward questions will be asked about the failure of Carillion and the behaviour in the company’s boardroom. Once such question would be how is it that so many hedge funds had short positions on the companies shares, yet this wasn’t sounding alarm bells with others?

I’ve just come across this load of nonsense about Hs2 from the Green Party’s Mark Kier in Hillingdon, North London. It’s been posted on YouTube by ‘Occupy News Network a ragbag of leftists and anarchists. It’s straight from the ‘make it up as you go along’ school of political commentary.

These are the people who’re backing the futile protest in Harvil Rd, which is hardly ‘Swampy’ or Twyford Down! Apart from occupying a stretch of pavement they appear to have been unable to even delay the HS2 preparation work in the area, never mind actually stop anything!

In his YouTube diatribe, Kier claims (amongst other things) that Hs2 costs £110bn (it doesn’t), it’s funded by Chinese loans (it isn’t) and that it’s “wiped out democracy” (that’ll be why Parliament passed the Hs2 bill by a vote of 452 MPS to 41 then!). He also trots out some tired old canards such as the ‘fact’ Hs2 will be wider than a motorway (it won’t) and that the time saving between London-Birmingham is 20 minutes (it isn’t).

The pointless Harvil Rd protest has attracted several Green Party leaders, who’ve trotted along to grandstand and have their photos taken in ‘solidarity’ with the protesters. They’ve all parroted similar nonsense to Kier, which shows that the problems with the party being both dishonest and ill-informed is systemic. It also suggest that the Green party has retreated back to its protest/pressure group roots rather than trying to maintain the fiction that it has any credibility as a serious political party.

None of this rubbish will stop Hs2 in the slightest of course, but it does help to show why the Green Party has slumped in the polls in recent years. I wouldn’t trust this lot to run a whelk stall, far less a Council or, God forbid – a country.

I’ve been threatening to blog about the latest daft Stop Hs2 petition for ages now but I’ve never been able to find the time as it’s been busy year on a whole host of fronts. I’ve finally found a few moments and thought, it’s now or never…

First, a bit of history. Back in September the sole surviving ‘national’ Stop Hs2 umbrella group was foolish (and desperate) enough to start a new petition on the Government website. Regular readers will know how I love these petitions as they allow you to mine data. Each signature is allocated to the constituency it comes from so you can discover where the anti Hs2 campaign’s strength lies – and where its weaknesses are. Amongst other things the number of signatures helps show where there are active Stophs2 groups.

The results have been fascinating. Right from the start it was obvious the petition was never going to hit its target, but that didn’t prevent @stophs2 boasting that they’d harvested 10,000 signatures in their first week. It was a boast that was always going to come back and haunt them – as it’s proved…

I decided to drill down the data by analysing each constituency Hs2 passes through and update the results every two days. As the petition quickly faltered I decided to add the monthly scores, which have proved to be interesting – and also the last time anyone signed in each constituency. Predictably phase 1 of Hs2 provides the vast bulk of the signatures as that’s where the campaign was best organised & where all the ‘national’ anti Hs2 groups were based (Hs2aa, AGAHST, 51M and stophs2) but it’s pointless as the Phase 1 Hybrid Bill has Royal Assent and Phase 1’s under construction! Here’s today’s results. I’ve added the number of constituents for comparison.

As you can see, the greatest ‘success’ is in Cheryl Gillans constituency, where a ‘massive’ 1474 people have signed. But wait, what percentage of all constituents is that? It’s only 1.57% – and that’s in the one place that’s the ‘hotbed’ of Stophs2 with a prominent anti MP! Head North out of the Chilterns and the numbers drop dramatically, with lots of zeros appearing. Head into London and the pictures exactly the same. Even Camden (supposedly the most anti of London boroughs) only reaches 370 signatures (or 0.26%). This suggests to me that in many areas the ‘action group’ network’s collapsed. A search for their websites or perusal of their Facebook or Twitter accounts confirms that suspicion.

Now let’s move on to the next phase of Hs2 – phase 2a to Crewe and on to Manchester. The numbers here are very interesting…

The best number here is a measly 324, or 0.38% in Stone, which still has a functioning stophs2 group (of sorts) and an anti MP – Bill Cash. After that the numbers are appalling. Look at the dates when someone last signed. It’s clear there’s few functioning stophs2 groups on the rest of the route. Stafford’s a waste of time and even Tatton (which includes the dysfunctional Mid-Cheshire Stophs2 group) can’t muster more than 0.32%! head North into metropolitan Manchester and the numbers are laughable! This bodes badly for stophs2 when the phase 2a bill passes 2nd reading & begins its path through Parliament. Now lets have a look at Phase 2 to Leeds…

Despite a handful of active stophs2 groups on this section and acres of bluff and bluster about ‘big’ protests, judicial reviews etc, it’s clear that there’s little going on in many constituencies. Rother Valley’s the noticeable exception, but even here the figures aren’t huge (unless you count 1.3% of all constituents as a major problem). Also, this area’s where groups are in direct conflict with MPs who may not be happy about details of the route, but who still support building Hs2.

Let’s look at the headline % figures for each of the 3 groups, which puts things into a different perspective. Phase 1 has 0.30% of all constituents signed up. Phase 2 to Manchester has just 0.10% and the Leeds leg only has 0.17%. In total that’s a tiny 0.34% of all the 6,567,433 constituents!

Here’s another perspective. The Government website contains lots of polls. The headline for Stophs2 is this.

Not exactly a million man march, is it? It gets worse. The Hs2 petition’s No 21 in the ratings. It’s beaten by petitions about banning fireworks (108,715) banning balloon & sky lantern releases (43,326) and the sale of animal fur (27,667) – amongst others!

What this crazy petitions revealed is how the anti hs2 campaign’s been a spectacular failure that’s continuing to fail. All the national groups bar one have folded. The one that remains (Stophs2) is toothless. It doesn’t have the money or political influence to keep the campaign going – especially now that spades are in the ground preparing for the construction of phase 1 whilst political attention shifts off their turf to Phase 2a and beyond.

2018 is going to be a very interesting year for Hs2 – but for the anti Hs2 campaign it’s ‘Good-night Vienna’

You have to laugh! The anti Hs2 campaign’s in the doldrums after a terrible political party conference season, coupled with the fact that, well, they’re pretty much irrelevant nowadays. So, to try and fill space on their website and pretend that something’s happening that isn’t a disaster, Joe Rukin penned this…

Here’s a screengrab.

Question Time vets its audience and invites them from a wide area. This is hardly representative of Stockport, but let’s just play along with Joe’s spin for a while. ‘Stockport agrees Hs2 is a monumental waste of money’. Really?

Let’s ignore the fact that there’s not a single StopHs2 (in)action group in the whole of Greater Manchester. The nearest one is the ineffectual Mid-Cheshire group, who’ve had to pretend to be from Manchester in the past (here they are in 2014). So, what’s the hard evidence for such a claim? Well, why don’t we have a look at the new national petition that StopHs2 started last month? Surely, Stockport will register in that as an absolute hotbed of anti Hs2 feeling – as Rukin’s claimed. Oh, wait…

Here’s a screenshot of the petition results from Stockport, taken earlier today.

A grand total of 9 constituency residents, 0.01%…

As usual, Rukin’s bullshit and bombast falls just as soon as you start looking at the truth.

I’ve not blogged about the anti Hs2 campaign for some time, mainly because their campaign’s collapsed. There’s nothing going on nationally, just a dwindling number of folk moaning about Hs2 on Twitter. Locally, a few campaign groups on Phase 2 continue to make a noise, but their numbers are small and there’s little in the way of co-ordination.

However, last Thursday, Joe Rukin of the sole surviving ‘national’ group (Stop Hs2) decided to start yet another anti Hs2 petition using the Governments template. What a bad idea! I’ve always said that (like social media), these petitions are a double-edged sword. They’re just as likely to show a campaign’s weaknesses as much as its strengths – as is the case here. Regular readers will know I love this petition format as it provided some very interesting numbers to crunch. Signatories are identified by constituency and a total is given as a percentage of resident constituents. So, this morning I crunched the numbers. The petition will run until March 2018, which means Stophs2 have 6 months of embarrassment to come (if they last that long).

The map that comes with the petition’s the really useful resource as it highlights the constituents with the largest number of signs using different colours. The darker the colour, the more who’ve signed. Now, spot where Hs2 goes!

Straight away the map explodes the myth that the Stop Hs2 campaign’s national. It’s clear that it’s anything but. Folk signing the petition are mostly living on the route, with the greatest concentration on Phase 1 around the Chilterns!

Here’s the number crunching, firstly for constituencies on Hs2 Phase 1 – which is a done deal now.

The first figure is the number of constituents, the second is the number who’ve signed the petition and the final one is the percentage of constituents. The first fact that leaps out is how tiny the percentages are, the largest is just over half 1%! The second fact is that phase 1 signatories make up a third of the grand total of 6229. The other fact is that other constituencies on the phase 1 route aren’t on the spreadsheet as the numbers of signatories are so small.

Now let’s have a look at Phase 2. I’ve divided them between the two legs of Hs2, Manchester and Leeds. Lets look at the Manchester route first.

What’s fascinating about this is that so few constituencies Hs2 passes through feature. This proves what I’ve been saying for some time, the stop Hs2 campaign’s always been weak here (there’s never been a single anti Hs2 group in Manchester for example) but now it looks like it’s pretty much collapsed. Despite the presence of a small but noisy Mid-Cheshire ‘action’ group, Congleton constituency only has 25 signs. Stafford has 31.

Now let’s look at the Leeds leg.

The numbers show that all the noise that’s come from one or two groups in Yorkshire and elsewhere hasn’t translated into signatures and the percentages for the constituencies are well below what we see on phase 1, which suggests there’s far less outrage about Hs2 here.

It’s worth remembering that these petitions get the greatest number of signs in the first few days. Once the activists have signed, numbers drop off rapidly. To reach it’s target the petition needs over 555 signs every single day for the duration. There’s no chance of that happening. This petition’s utterly pointless. The only thing it’s doing is allowing people to monitor the pulse of the stophs2 ‘campaign’. Judging by these numbers, it won’t be long before someone turns off its life-support machine. I’ll report back monthly, just to monitor what happens.